Section 9: Praying from Inner Stillness
In a previous practice it was suggested that, when in stillness, we not hold onto anything—thoughts, emotions, insights—but that we simply notice these, let them go, then put our attention back on our inner stillness by focusing on feeling the energy of our inner body.
However, sometimes when sitting in stillness, we may feel an urge to pray for someone or for a specific situation. This requires discernment, because it can be either a prompting from our divine center, or a trap engineered by our restless mind. It’s important to recognize the difference.
When the desire to pray for someone arises from our center, it’s characterized by a calm “knowing.”
There’s no rushed, busy sense of, “Oh, I’ve got to pray for Mike, and for Emily, and for . . .”
When something comes from the divine, it isn’t tainted by the franticness that accompanies an earthquake, lightning, or a storm, but is experienced as “a still small voice.”
A more accurate translation of this ancient expression is “a sound of sheer silence.” It is a state of complete centeredness, presence, stillness, and peace, which is suffused with "knowing."
If we experience a genuine prompting to pray, it’s important not to ignore it. Since this impulse is arising from stillness, we take it seriously.
No mental image of what we are praying to is needed in order to pray, no concept of the divine Presence required. Rather, our prayer comes out of and is an expression of pure being, which is an infinite universal reality.
Staying in our inner body, we incorporate the blessings and prayers that come to us from our heart center for the particular person or situation.
Our prayer will be effective because it comes out of the still power of the universe within us. It is being expressing through us.
Opportunity for Self-inquiry and Sharing:
- Do you sometimes experience a desire to pray; and if so, what triggers this desire?
- As your ability to be present in your life has increased, how has the way you pray changed?
- How do you now experience prayer, given that you no longer picture the divine as a reality “out there” somewhere? To whom do you pray?
- Can you share an occasion when prayer flowed from the divine at your center, and what the effect was?
This ends Section 9
The next section will be posted on Monday, May 17
- Login or register to post comments
Share This
Search
Book Sale at the Namaste Store
Gift of Transformation
Namaste Recommends
Namaste Radio
My current belief is that every thought/feeling is a prayer. If my thoughts are negative, it's a sign that I'm not present. It's one of my signals that I've lost the now. At the same time I feel that no thought is also a prayer. It's harder to describe what that means though. It has a sense of celebration in it that does not need to ask for anything.
Thoughts intrude on stillness. Intuition/divine message floats grace-fully into our awareness.
I wish I had this level of clarity.
A wonderful meditator once told me that he used to be very confused about whether he was having intuition (divine message) or a thought. Well the intuition became louder and louder until he was absolutely sure that it was not a thought in his mind. He described it as a very loud voice giving him ideas that he had no inkling of.
Swami Vivekananda had told people (this is documented) that when he was in US he wanted to give a lecture on a new topic every time. With almost daily lectures he ran out of topics. Then he described how a loud voice used to give him a lecture every morning while he was alone in his hotel room sleeping. Then he gave the next morning's lecture based on that dictation. Most of these lectures were hand written by one of his devotees and are available in a 8 volume Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.
So it seems like different people may experience the divine message in different ways.
Another side episode - Once Swami Vivekanada received Encyclopedia Brittanica from an admirer. This was around 1900 AD. One of his devotees saw him reading this encyclopedia. He asked him why he was reading such a massive book, after all he would forget it anyway. Vivekananda said I am on volume 18, you can ask me any question from the first 17 volumes. The devotee could not believe it, so he took out the volumes and started asking questions. Vivekanada could not only answer all questions, in most cases he gave the answer word by word as in the encyclopedia. This is not a story, the admirer wrote this in an article which was later published in Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.